In order for a medical specialist and his/her team to be able to perform a surgical intervention, intensive illumination of an operation area and particularly a patient's inside is generally necessary.
To this end, many OR's are provided with lamps mounted on a distal end of movable supporting arms. These arms may be controlled manually in order to direct light in a desired direction and provide the proper illumination needed during the surgery.
This conventional way of illuminating an OR however has several disadvantages. For example, each of the lamps has to be manually manipulated to illuminate a particular area of an OR. If an operation requires various areas of a human body or various areas of an OR to be illuminated (apart from a patient e.g. also an instrument cart or table), this may be hard to achieve using these conventional means. Also, the areas of an OR that need to be illuminated may change during an operation, the various lamps may thus have to be continuously manipulated manually, which can be cumbersome. Furthermore, the presence of a supporting arm and a lamp may disturb the laminar air flow established by a Laminar Air Flow (LAF) ceiling; even more so if a plurality of lamps is provided in order to be able to illuminate different parts of an OR.
Laminar air flow ceilings may be provided in (parts) of operating rooms to establish a substantially laminar vertical air flow from the ceiling to an operating area. This air flow is provided to keep an operating area (and in particular the patient) free from germs, bacteria, pathogens etc. and avoid that the medical specialist and his/her support personnel contaminates the operating area of the patient.
The presence of the supporting arms and lamps may disturb the laminar air flow established by the LAF ceiling and thus may lead to a higher risk of infections occurring after an operation.
WO 2007/036581 discloses a lighting system including an array of light-emitting elements, in which the light-emitting elements can be individually controlled or in groups. This solves the problem of simultaneously illuminating different areas of an OR. However, the array of light-emitting elements is suspended from a ceiling and can significantly disturb the laminar air flow of an LAF ceiling.
WO 01/69130 discloses a ceiling having a plurality of prefabricated lighting module elements. Said lighting module elements include a gyroscopic suspension system in order to rotate a light bulb (or LED elements) around two axes. The gyroscopic suspension system however occupies a large space and requires a cumbersome installation. Moreover, if such a lamp is mounted in an LAF ceiling, the space occupied by the lamp cannot be used for passing air into the OR.
The present developments are aimed at avoiding or at least partially reducing one or more of the before-mentioned disadvantages related to prior systems. Further advantages will become apparent from the description that follows.